The Mathematics That Power Our World ─ How Is It Made?

Khoury and Lamothe hope to convince undergraduate students of the need to acquire mathematical skills and to introduce the general public to the pivotal role mathematics plays in modern life. They assume a mathematical maturity after a year of science or engineering in university, but think that very motivated high school students could follow most of the arguments. They discuss what makes a calculator calculate; basics of data compression, prefix-free codes, and Huffman codes; the JPEG (Joint Picture Expert Group) standard for still picture compression; the global positioning system; and image processing and face recognition. Annotation ©2016 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)